Sermons

Sowing Goodness

I confess that I have exactly one experience with sowing. My people are from Eastern Oklahoma and Western Arkansas. My dad was the first in his family to go to college and not sustain himself from keeping his own farm, although that was certainly how he had grown up. When I visited my grandparents’ house, distant relatives were always dropping off squash, okra, pecans, apples, whatever was growing in that season. There was talk of the varieties of crops, not just tomatoes but Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and Big Boy tomatoes. Then in my sophomore year of high school, Dad decided I needed to learn about raising my own food and so we planted a crop of corn at my grandparents’ house. This experience became so legendary in my family that we now just refer to it as “the corn.”

My dad carefully tilled the land, then showed me how to plant. I was to take two seeds and drop them down a pipe that he had cut just for this purpose, then move on to the next spot several inches down. We would come along later with a hoe to cover the seeds. But I got frustrated with the pipe plan and I decided that for each pair of seeds I would just lean over and put the seeds right in the ground myself. So I did that once and it worked well and I tried it again and then I did it a few hundred more times. When I tell you that the next day I could barely walk. My hamstrings were incredibly sore from the hundreds of bodyweight Romanian deadlifts that I had unknowingly performed. I learned a lot about the real physicality of raising crops through that experience.

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But the point is, we took care with each seed, carefully tilling, planting, covering. It was painstaking, emphasis on the *pain.* And so I have to ask what is going on with the sower in the Gospel of Matthew today? The sower isn’t carefully planting anything, it seems.

These seeds are being thrown out without any respect to where they will go: on the road, on the rocks, in the thorns. Although the only amounts given in the story are “some” (as in some seeds fell here or there), I think it’s reasonable to surmise that the majority of the seed wasn’t planted in good soil. It doesn’t seem like good stewardship of the seeds. Given that Matthew was writing for an audience much more familiar with planting practices than we are today, this would have been absolutely obvious to them.

This leads me to want to reexamine what is going on in this story. This parable, often called the Parable of the Sower, could also be retitled the Parable of the Sowing, The Parable of the Seeds, The Parable of the 4 Soils. And I must tell you that this is my most disliked kind of parable because it includes Jesus decoding the text. The whole second half of our gospel reading today is just that. I want to say, “Hey Jesus, that is my job!” Not only does the included interpretation flatten the potential meanings we can find in the parables, it boxes the preacher in.

The interpretation given here by Jesus encourages us to see ourselves as the seeds, to examine what kind of soil we are in, whether we are bearing fruit. Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, encourages us to view the parables as stories that “provoke, convict and amuse.” They “challenge our stereotypes about people and society.” And so I suggest that we unbox ourselves from just one interpretation of this story.

Likely Jesus told these parables again and again and offered interpretations in different ways. Perhaps Matthew included the interpretation here that best suited his community. And that gives us the license to also consider other meanings.

What if instead of the seed, we see ourselves as the sower? We know that our pursuits do not always flourish. Some worthy endeavors seem like sure things but fail to come to fruition, (a word that literally means bearing fruit). Some relationships, jobs, dreams, spiritual practices never take root. Some are choked off by outside forces. Certainly in the church and in our lives we try many more things than ever succeed. Perhaps the Parable of the Sower is telling us to continue to sow wildly, to cast our love and mercy on any to whom we can. Worthy and unworthy alike (and I think we could all see ourselves in each of those two camps) receive the promiscuous, indiscriminate love of God, and are also worthy of our love and care.

Two weeks ago many of us gathered at Claggett for our parish retreat. And I remembered that when I read this passage because the theme of our retreat was rooted and reaching. Our community has deep roots in Capitol Hill, in the Episcopal tradition, in the decades of community building that has happened in this place. And we have the discipline of reaching: reaching out, connecting, building, giving shade to those who need a place to rest.

There’s a lot to be discouraged about, to not be sure of, to feel conflicted by. But when I see you each Sunday morning, I think that this community is the proof of the good soil. We are proof that a gospel of justice, love and goodness is what the world has always needed and what the world needs now. And so we are called not to be complacent but to continue to sow our seeds of goodness, not knowing what will come of them. I look forward to joining you in the fields.